


A Strange Kind of Love Part 4

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owen returns to the Island</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strange Kind of Love Part 4

You return to the island even though you’re not supposed to. You step over the broken fragments of Starbuck’s split-tailed mermaid. Glass crunches beneath your boots and you see fuzz from the stuffed dino toys for the little kids caught in the pavement like seeds from the cottonwoods back home. The saplings planted for aesthetic reasons are growing too tall. One day, their roots are going to break the entire street into pieces. 

One day, this place will be covered in dirt and green things and dinosaur nests. 

Something dangerous, something new, something growing.

But you’re kidding yourself. This place is still dangerous, and an electric thrill zips through your skin as you sweat under the hot sun. Your pants stick and you think you should have worn shorts but what are you stupid you know the prickly barbarous plants that grow here, almost as dangerous as the fucking dinosaurs.

You push through the green things. You slip in the mud and fall on your ass. You get up again, cursing quietly, wiping your dirty palms down your thighs. 

You don’t know what you’d say if some reporter were to stick a microphone in your mouth and ask what the fuck do you think you’re doing.

You know that the raptors are wild. You know they’re not pets, and your mother’s voice reading Narnia out loud drums through your mind.

Not a tame lion.

Not a tame raptor.

But sometimes you think about Blue. Raptors are pack animals. Blue’s never been alone, not once, and she’s been all on her own for months now. There’s no other raptor to find here, there’s no other pack for her to make or find.

You remember another story your mother read aloud to you. One by Bradbury, and how a creature from the sea, all alone, heard a fog horn and thought it was someone like her. Someone lonely and sad, in need of another, in need of company.

But there’s no foghorn and there’s no raptors and you think that ain’t right. That ain’t right at all and you wonder if she’s still alive.

You don’t think you’ll find her. You’re not even sure if you do want to find her because she’s wild and dangerous.

She’s still a predator. 

You think about the raptors the lab cooked up and you think about the real raptors, the ones all fossilized and trapped under rock. The raptors they made to look like people want their dinosaurs to look like. Something from their old books the ones they read when they were young, something they can think about with nostalgia.

Living in the time of dinosaurs straight from your childhood.

But you know that Blue should’ve had feathers, and you think about her with feathers, and you kick at a branch because someone decided no because it wouldn’t look like the raptors they thought they knew.

She should have had feathers. 

You’re jumpy, can feel the fear skittering under your skin every time something moves in the trees. It’s been a long time. It’s okay to be afraid, you tell yourself. 

You have the clicker in your pocket. You want to use it but you know you gotta wait until you see her--if she’s still alive.

You make your way out of the trees to the long grasses. Raptors favor it. Makes it easy to hide. Makes it easier to hunt.

You feel like you’ve just strung yourself out like so much bait.

You make it through the glade alive and you’re back in the trees. You keep walking. Blisters form on your heel and you keep trekking. You think about turning back. Sleeping out here would kill you, you think. 

But then, it’s not like you’ve seen any dinosaurs.

You wonder where they’ve gone.

Were they eaten. Did they die. There’s a whole island, maybe they moved from their paddocks. Maybe they don’t want to be reminded of their time in human care. 

You turn back.

This was a stupid idea. 

Your foot snaps a twig and you almost don’t hear the clucking purr to your left and you close your eyes. Of course she’d attack from the side.

That’s what raptors do. Misdirection. 

You freeze, and you lift your arms like you did a long time ago in the paddock when that young kid got pulled down. You turn to the left and you see her. “Blue,” you say because that’s her name and you think she might respond to that. Her head tilts to the side, like your neighbor’s little budgie listening to the rock music on too loud.

But she’s poised to jump, too. You can see her back legs bent to spring. 

One of them’s crooked, and you wonder if that happened during the fight with the indominus or if it’s new. You bet it wouldn’t have happened if she’d had a pack.

“Don’t do it, Blue,” you say. You don’t think you can risk lowering your hands to get your clicker so you click your tongue against your teeth. “Eyes on me.” 

She lifts her head, like she did all that time ago, and you realize that she remembers. She remembers everything she did with you and she remembers you. 

Well duh. If she didn’t, you’d probably be lunch right about now.

She takes small steps towards you, making even smaller noises at you. You think it’s a good sign that she’s not doing that barking call, the one that reminded you of dolphins. Then you realize it’s because she’s the only raptor here, that there’s nobody else to call out to.

She’s so close you can see the delicate skin stretched along her jaw, the way she’s breathing sharp, the skin fluttering along the cavities in her skull. You can feel her hot breath against your palm and you’re strung so tight with fear and exhilaration you don’t know which is which when she puts her snout feather-soft against your palm. “Good girl,” you say. You wish you had something for her. Another dead rat or something better, something alive and kicking. 

She moves so fast you don’t quite know what’s happening except your flat on your back, wind knocked out of you, with several hundred pounds of raptor on your chest, and you think you hear one of your ribs splinter as you gape for air.

Her big claws are stuck in your shirt, and she’s clicking them against your skin. Red stains the dirty blue of your shirt. Her mouth’s right in her face and you think you smell her last kill on her breath.

Your stomach roils with nausea and fear.

The clucking noises are getting louder and her jaws are getting wider as she pulls back, her forelegs curling in, readying for the spring, the tearing and the shredding. Her tail’s springing up, whipping through the air.

She’s testing you, to see if you’re still the alpha that she remembers.

You still can’t breathe and it hurts like hell but adrenaline finally kicks in and you pivot your hips upwards so that she loses balance, so that she falls head over heels, landing sprawling in the dirt as you climb to your feet, clutching your broken ribs.

“You don’t do that again, Blue,” you tell her. “You’re the beta, not the alpha.” You try to tell her that you’re the alpha in so many words but it feels wrong to say it and so you don’t.

She’s already on her feet. You wonder if she’ll try that shit again or if it’s decided. You need to get back, and you turn south towards the coast. 

Blue follows you. Not like a dog, but she flits through the trees, sometimes surging ahead and then circling back around. 

You need to stop and rest, and you lean forward with your hands planted against your knees. Your heart’s jumping and it’s hard to breathe. Sweat’s slipping down your skin and into your eyes. 

You jump when Blue whines behind you, and you feel a hot gust of her breath against your neck. You swing around towards her and she backs up, but her tails’s swishing, she’s clucking and purring at the same time. Her claw’s clicking against the ground in a stuttering rush like when you made her stop chasing that pig and all she want’s do is go, go, go, even though she’s not as fast as she used to be and you’ve already seen there’s a limp in her step.

“You wanna run, girl?” you ask. You whistle, sharp and shrill, and she takes off, and you hold your ribs together with your hand as you run with her. 

Somewhere to your right, you hear it--you hear the raptor call, the one that still gives you goosebumps, but you whistle right back at her and keep running.


End file.
